Senate of ‘nat’l reconstruction’ closes session
THE Senate adjourned sine die and formally closed the first regular session as it passed essential pieces of legislation, keeping the promise of being a “Senate of national reconstruction.”
“Today, we take a short break from a productive year during which we responded to the needs of the people and the challenges of the times with hard work and high purpose,” Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said in his closing speech before the Senate takes a short break. “A highlight among our accomplishments is our approval of eight priority measures of the administration.
The Senate chief led the Senate in each of the 77 regular plenary session days since July last year.
The senators spent hundreds of hours deliberating important topics and pressing national issues in sessions, committee hearings, inquiries, and technical working groups.
Records showed that the senators collectively filed over 2,200 bills and 630 resolutions in the first regular session, all of which are in various stages of the legislative process.
The Senate rallied to pass 31 landmark bills, 22 of which await the signature of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and adopted more than 70 resolutions.
“While this scoreboard shows the quantity of our input, it cannot even begin to describe the quality of each. True to our tradition, we do not agree to proposals without discussion, nor embrace ideas without debate,” Zubiri said.
“All of the laws we forge here go through careful study. We do not deliberately make the process slower. What we do is improve them,” he said in Filipino.
One of the priority measures passed by the Upper Chamber is Senate Bill No. (SBN) 2020, establishing the “Maharlika Investment Fund,” a sovereign wealth fund projected to invest government reserves and other public and private capital to help revitalize and boost the Philippine economy.
Other measures for the creation of jobs and economic opportunities passed by the Senate are SBN 1594 or the “One Town, One Product (OTOP)” Philippines Act; SBN 2021, or the Shared Service Facilities Project for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises; and SBN 2035, or “Trabaho Para sa Bayan Act”, which aims to generate decent and permanent jobs, as well as to provide support to workers and businesses nationwide.
The Senate is scheduled to resume its Second Regular Session in the last week of July.
